A mystery prankster registered RobFord.ca, the address Ford allowed to expire, and programmed it to send visitors to thestar.com.

A mystery prankster registered RobFord.ca, which Ford allowed to expire earlier this year, and set the website to automatically send visitors to the home page of the Star, the excellent publication Ford does not talk to and says he has “no respect for.”

On Tuesday, visitors to the site were greeted with the insincere words “Rob, we’re sorry!!” before they were redirected.

The prank seems to have been prompted by Ford’s unwillingness to communicate with Star reporters. The mayor’s spokesperson would not comment when contacted by a Star reporter.

“The robford.ca domain name is a site I have not used for some time,” Ford wrote on Twitter. “It was not hacked and is no longer being used by me.”

RobFord.ca, Ford’s website as a councillor, contained content from him until at least February. He let the address lapse in the summer. The rogue registrant registered it anonymously in mid-November.

He or she did not respond to an interview request sent through the website of the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA). He or she subsequently changed taunting tactics — first sending visitors to the Wikipedia page for Robert Ford, the 19th-century outlaw who killed Jesse James, then launching a “Rob(ert) Ford Beauty Contest” poll, before the website either crashed from all the giddy traffic or was taken offline.

The web shenanigans represented the latest strange twist in the ongoing saga of the mayor and the city’s highest-circulation newspaper.

Torstar Corp. chair John Honderich wrote Thursday that the Star would file a complaint with council’s integrity commissioner over Ford’s refusal to send its reporters official mayoral communications. On Friday morning, Ford took to talk radio to lambaste the Staras biased, unethical and unworthy of being read.

The conflict originated with a 2010 article about a 2001 confrontation between him and a high school football player he coached. He says the article was false and demands an apology; the Star stands by its reporting.

Ford, whose real website can be found at Toronto.ca/mayor, may be able to get Robford.ca back by making a formal complaint to CIRA. But Paul Andersen, the president of EGATE Domains, through which the prankster registered the address, said Ford would have been wise to simply renew it in the first place.

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